


Demonstrable

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Biting, Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inline with canon, M/M, Mind Control, Pacific Rim: Uprising Spoilers, Rough Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14092824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Hermann’s not about to claim he doesn’t feel the absence, like a part of himself torn free and still showing the scar, but he has learned how to work around his disabilities, and he can function with a psychological crutch as well as with a physical one." Hermann has learned how to cope in the years alone, but when Newt needs him he knows where to be.





	Demonstrable

Hermann goes to the cell alone.

It’s a long walk. He’s used to pacing out over the whole of the base, to working his way down endless corridors and out across the vast construction flats where the Jaegers are built and housed; even in his own laboratory he can’t stop moving, now, he has to stride up and down the clear space at the front of it just to work off the nervous energy that he carries all the time, like an electrical charge running through his veins. He’s grown accustomed to it, over the last decade: as he’s grown used to the startling sparks of insight in his head, and the feel of powdered latex covering the chalk on his fingertips, and the smell of preservatives soaking into his clothes. These are all things that have become his, whatever their original source, things he has clung to the more tightly over the gaps between each of Newton’s letters, over the ever-increasing silence between already infrequent calls; until finally they are all he has, they are what he has built his life on. He’s not about to claim he doesn’t feel the absence, like a part of himself torn free and still showing the scar, but he has learned how to work around his disabilities, and he can function with a psychological crutch as well as with a physical one.

It’s different, now. Hermann can feel his heart pounding in his chest with every slow step, can feel the whisper of thoughts through his head; and he’s paying attention now, to the details, as he hasn’t had occasion to do in long, long years. _Mine_ , he thinks, as a shiver of tense anxiety runs down his spine; _his_ that urge to run, to shout, to snap his fingers and babble over words just to fill the too-much space of the quiet around him. It’s Newton that is wondering how deep the damage in the other’s psyche goes, that frames the fears in Hermann’s mind around the spark of synapses and the routing of personality; it’s Hermann’s own focus that tightens his grip around the handle of the cane in his hand and keeps striding forward with clenched-teeth determination. _He’s hardly even himself_ , Newton’s borrowed voice whispers, _how much of him is really left at all?_ ; and whip-quick Hermann’s response, with the unthinking grace of long years of verbal sparring: _I’m still_ me _,_ the words biting with the vicious edge of a decade past, when Hermann kept the line between himself and Newton drawn in yellow on the floor as if boundaries have ever been anything but an invitation to the other. _That means he’s still him_.

 _How do you know?_ Hermann’s steps are heavy against the floor; he can feel each one rattle up his skeleton and jolt against his spine. There’s a pattern to them, a pace he has learned to lean into, to push almost to a run when needed; it’s strange to notice the struggle now, to feel the awareness of it like noticing his breath flexing in his chest. _How do you know what you saw?_ A thud of Hermann’s cane, the rhythm of it knocking hard against the metal underfoot; he pulls himself forward, staring out into the shadows of the corridor before him without seeing anything of the isolated space surrounding him. _You think you know him? Are you sure you’d recognize him? Newt’s not the only thing you Drifted with._

“Oh, shut up,” Hermann snaps aloud, and speeds his pace to drown out the murmur of the fears in his head.

The cell looks empty, from the outside. There’s no window in the door, no grate through which Hermann can peer; there’s just unrelieved metal, the welds at the edges and over the handle crusted with rust. Hermann eyes it, wondering how heavy it is, wondering how easily the hinges will swing; but that’s Newton’s nervous babble, easily crushed out by calm logic. The soldiers brought Newton down here, they had to open the door then; and Jake’s been here just an hour gone, Hermann knows, in a mostly-futile pursuit of information beyond what they gleaned from Mako’s message and Hermann’s own leaps of logic. The door will open for Hermann, the same way it opened for everyone else; the hesitation holding him where he stands has far more to do with the strain at his shoulders and catching panic-tight in his throat than any objective concern. Hermann stares at the door handle, feeling his fingers clench at his cane, feeling his knees tense and lock with the adrenaline rushing through him; and then he huffs a breath, and he lets Newton’s raw, reckless energy surge him forward to reach for the handle and pull the door open.

It’s an unadorned cell. The space isn’t intended for living in any sense of the word; it’s a holding space, a bunker intended to confine for questioning and threats. Hermann’s skin prickles with the weight of the walls around him, with the claustrophobia of the metal bearing down on the space; but it’s Newton he’s looking at, he can’t spare any attention for the details of the cell itself. Newton is nearly upright, strapped into what looks like a repurposed ejection pod from one of the Jaegers; his wrists are locked down by cuffs to match those closed around his ankles, as if it’s the physical danger he poses that they are afraid of more than the contaminated edge of his mind. His head is tipped back against the support behind him, his gaze turned up towards the ceiling; but there’s a smile on his lips, something lopsided and dragging, and Hermann isn’t surprised when Newton speaks without looking down to meet his gaze.

“Doctor Gottlieb.” The words drawl in his throat, Newton’s voice but something else’s tone, something slick as oil on water and dark as whatever is roiling behind his eyes. “I knew it was only a matter of time before we had the pleasure of your company.”

Hermann leans against the support of his cane and lets a breath go as slowly and deliberately as he can. “I don’t intend to speak to you,” he says with as much dignity as he can drape around himself. His accent slides on his tongue, the way it always does when he tips towards formality; he doesn’t try to fight it back any more than he tries to warm the chill on his tone. “Come back, Newt, I want to talk to you.”

Newton’s mouth drags wide across his face; when he laughs it bounces crazily off the walls to fill the space with static-raw sound. “ _Newt_ ,” that stolen voice repeats. “The devoted friend until the end, is that it?” His head lifts from the metal behind him; when his eyes fix on Hermann they’re nearly black with how wide the pupils are dilated. “Even when he abandoned you?”

Hermann lifts his chin. It’s easier than he expected to stare into that familiar face; the expression is too contorted, the shape of the features too uncanny in their present tension. The unfamiliarity is more of a relief than he expected. “If I forced myself to make mistakes every time Newt does so I would never have time to get anything done.” He takes a breath and lets it out with intention. “Now. How long are you going to keep hiding from me, Newt?”

“Newt is lost.” There’s a strange resonance to the words, like they’re echoing from a far greater distance than just the inside of Newton’s chest; as if there might be another Breach inside the tattooed span of the other’s ribs, opening up into that chaos that Newton invited into himself. “All your talking isn’t going to bring him out.” Newton’s head tips, his gaze flickers down over Hermann’s awkward posture, over his tight-clenched hold at his cane. Hermann watches the corners of Newton’s mouth pull tight on the illusion of a smile. “Unless you intend to beat him into submission? You have more than enough reason to want to.”

Hermann presses his lips together. When he swallows he can feel his throat work on the memory of fingerprints, on the press of a familiar thumb crushing hard against his artery, on the thud of his pulse racing on fear and horror and -- still, even then, even now -- that helpless electricity of proximity, even as Newton’s eyes glassed to the shadows he invited into himself.

“Not exactly,” he says, and he steps forward deliberately, letting the off-balance rhythm of his steps draw him closer. “I’m afraid I’m making use of this at the present moment.”

“You can’t tell us you don’t want to,” Newton’s voice taunts, still in that weird low range instead of the shrill freneticism that Newton -- _real_ Newton -- would drop into. “We’ve seen you, the way you were with him. The way he was with you.”

Hermann shakes his head sharply, throwing off this invasion as quickly as it’s offered. “No,” he says. “I’m not going to hit him.” And then he moves, all at once, taking a step forward to cross what distance is left at the same time he lifts his free hand towards Newton’s dark-eyed face. Newton’s head tips back, his gaze clouds with some deep-down, animal alarm, but Hermann’s fingers are catching at the back of his head to keep him from retreating to the metal behind him, and he’s leaning in too fast for the other to pull away.

“Answer me, Newt,” Hermann says, spilling the words past his lips with frantic speed; and his fingers tighten on Newton’s hair, and his head comes in and down, and his mouth crushes bruising-hard to Newton’s lips.

There’s stillness for a moment. Hermann’s heart is racing, his whole body is trembling with pent-up adrenaline; he can offer no more than this, has no greater persuasion. Newton’s mouth under his is soft, startled into surrender for such a long moment Hermann wonders if he wasn’t successful, if it wasn’t as easy as that; but then he can feel tension surge back between them, like a neural feedback in a failed Drift, and Newton jerks against him, pulling hard against Hermann’s hold on him. His mouth bruises Hermann’s lips, his teeth catch and bite down hard; Hermann’s tongue goes coppery with the taste of blood and he winces with the impact, but his grip on Newton’s head stays steady, he keeps leaning in for the heat of the other’s mouth. Newton shudders against him, like he’s riding out an electrical shock, like he’s reliving his first Drift attempt on a lab floor, ten years gone and fresh in Hermann’s nightmares; and then his mouth goes soft, his lips ease against Hermann’s. They stay still for another moment, Hermann’s heart racing on panic, on determination, on painful, starbright hope; and then there’s a tiny sound, something soft and whimpering against Newton’s tongue, and Hermann’s heart drops into freefall even before Newton surges up and forward to kiss him back with sudden, anxious force. The pressure aches at Hermann’s torn lip and jolts a quiver of what would be pain down his spine; but there’s no space for pain, no room for hurt, because Hermann doesn’t have to see Newton’s eyes to know who it is trembling with such frantic want against his mouth. His fingers ease, his hand slides down to stroke against Newton’s hair, and he lingers, his mouth full of copper and electricity and heat, until finally it’s Newton who pulls away, gasping for air as if he’s just come up from an endless ocean.

“Hermann,” he grates; and Hermann has to shut his eyes to that, has to duck his head and hide in shadow for the first moment of hearing his name like that, drawn shaky and frantic in Newton’s throat. “You. What are you _doing_?”

Hermann takes a breath and manages to offer something approximating a sigh. It’s hard to find even the illusion of resignation when his hand is shaking against the back of Newton’s neck and his blood feels like flame in his veins, but he makes the attempt, at least, before lifting his head to fix the other with his most condescending stare. “I’m bringing you back, obviously. Must I always spell everything out to you, Newt?”

Newton’s mouth twists, struggling with tension before it gives way to a shaky laugh. His forehead is creased hard on tension, his eyes are shining with hurt, but it’s him, unquestionably, from the crackle in his voice to the pained strain at his mouth. “You know it’s not as intimidating when you call me that.”

“I know,” Hermann says without flinching.

Newton’s gaze flickers over his face, skimming across the details of the other’s expression like he intends to map it anew for his own fractured memories. His eyes stick to Hermann’s lip, his forehead creases. “Did I bite you?”

“You did,” Hermann says.

“Ah,” Newton says. He licks against his lower lip. It’s a simple motion, a drag of his tongue across the red of Hermann’s blood on his skin; Hermann’s gaze drops at once to track it, his fingers flex harder against Newton’s neck. Newton stops still, hesitating halfway through the action; and then he laughs, the sound weak against the back of his throat, and he lets his head drop back to the support behind him as his lashes flutter shut.

“This is a bad idea, Hermann,” he says towards the ceiling. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to fight them.”

“I don’t think so either,” Hermann says, sharp with the words so Newton will lift his head back up to meet his gaze. Hermann meets his shocked stare levelly, without so much as a flinch anywhere in him. “Rather I _know_ you are.” He takes a breath, feels a flutter of panic in his chest; and lays hand to Newton’s own confidence, to the recklessness that he has made part of himself in the last decade. “You’re going to do it for me. With me.” He tightens his hold at the back of Newton’s neck again, this time with force enough to draw the other in towards him; when he ducks in it’s to press his forehead hard against Newton’s own, close enough that he can feel the ragged edges of Newton’s breathing against his mouth.

“We’ll do it together,” Hermann says; and then he takes a breath, and braces himself, and lets the Drift echo through him. “We are going to own this bad boy.”

Newton’s laugh is sudden and startled; it bursts out of him and over Hermann’s lips like a spill of water, like radiating heat. Hermann cracks into a smile of his own, huffing amusement as his cheeks flush with self-consciousness.

“Oh my god, Hermann,” Newton says. “Did you, like, _practice_ that, or something? Do I even know you?”

Hermann presses his lips tight together in an attempt to keep from smiling. It doesn’t work particularly well. “Don’t be absurd, Newt,” he says, in his most professorial tone. “There’s no one in the world or out of it who knows me better than you do.” And he ducks in while Newton’s laughter is still giving way to shaky affection to kiss the other’s lips clean once more.

Hermann doesn’t know whether it’s his own determination so steady in him or Newton’s, made soft and familiar by a decade of use, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. In the end, he’s as sure of Newton as he is of numbers.


End file.
